China’s exports down 3.2% in Jan
February 8, 2015, 3:59 am

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has stressed the “Q1 (first quarter) performance is crucial to the whole year’s results, and the government shall work on making a good start this year” [Xinhua]

Imports stood at 860 billion yuan, down 19.7 per cent, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said Sunday.

China’s foreign trade tumbled 10.8 per cent to 2.09 trillion yuan ($341.16 billion U.S. dollars) year on year in January, shows new data.

“Spring Festival impacts foreign trade data at the beginning of every year,” the GAC said in a press release.

The State Council, China’s Cabinet, has approved the GAC to release its trade data in yuan-denominated version since this year.

Before 2014, the GAC mainly used the US dollar in its trade data releases. It started to use both the dollar and yuan to denominate all trade figures in 2014 in an effort to promote the expansion in use of yuan.

China’s economy grew 7.4 per cent in 2014, in line with market expectations and registering the weakest expansion in 24 years, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said last month.

“As the global economy is undergoing a deep restructuring and slow recovery, China’s government will likely face heavy tasks in tackling the difficulties,” Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has said.

China’s 2014 gross domestic product reached 63.65 trillion yuan ($10.4 trillion). Growth in the fourth quarter came in at 7.3 per cent, flat with the rate seen in the third.

China is witnessing a marked but smooth and controlled slowdown, say Chinese scholars.

“In 2014, China’s domestic consumption contributed about 48.5 per cent to the national economy, 7 per cent more than the contribution from investment.The number of new jobs created in urban areas is expected to exceed 13 million. Despite the slowdown of economic growth and its enthusiastic reporting in the Western media, China has maintained acceptable levels of employment and inflation,” writes Prof. Haifeng Huang Director at the prestigious Peking University HSBC Business School Center in Beijing.

Manwhile, the IMF has sharply cut its 2015-2016 world growth forecast owing to weak prospects in Japan, the Eurozone, China and Russia.

A Wall Street Journal report says concern is growing among investors about the health of the global economy and the prospect that the eurozone may be headed for a bruising period of deflation, an economically damaging spiral of falling prices and wages and declining spending.

TBP and Agencies